New schools and new classmates: The disruption and peer group effects of school reassignment |
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| Institution: | 1. Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 W. 120th St., Box 174, New York, NY 10027, United States;2. Department of Economics, Stanford University, 579 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305, United States;3. Teachers College, Columbia University and NBER, 525 W. 120th St., Box 174, New York, NY 10027, United States;1. Postdoctoral Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Economics, Cambridge, MA, United States;2. Assistant Professor of Applied Psychology and Economics at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York, NY, United States;1. University of Southern California & RAND Corporation, 1090 Vermont Ave NW, Suite 1250, Washington, DC 20005, USA;2. RAND Corporation, 1776 Main St., Santa Monica, CA 90401, USA |
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| Abstract: | Policy makers periodically consider using student assignment policies to improve educational outcomes by altering the socio-economic and academic skill composition of schools. We exploit the quasi-random reassignment of students across schools in the Wake County Public School System to estimate the academic and behavioral effects of being reassigned to a different school and, separately, of shifts in peer characteristics. We rule out all but substantively small effects of transitioning to a different school as a result of reassignment on test scores, course grades and chronic absenteeism. In contrast, increasing the achievement levels of students’ peers improves students’ math and ELA test scores but harms their ELA course grades. Test score benefits accrue primarily to students from higher-income families, though students with lower family income or lower prior performance still benefit. Our results suggest that student assignment policies that relocate students to avoid the over-concentration of lower-achieving students or those from lower-income families can accomplish equity goals (despite important caveats), although these reassignments may reduce achievement for students from higher-income backgrounds. |
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| Keywords: | Peer effects Student assignment School integration School mobility |
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